Blog 3 Divorce

Sometimes a family is better off apart. I am the youngest of four. I was raised by a strict father and a tender mother. My dad had a firm belief that women should be cooks, cleaners, and in charge of keeping the house and kids looking spotless. My mother would occasionally try to break out of the habits my father had adopted as norms, but for the majority of my childhood her attempts were in vain. For example, my sisters and I were not allowed to paint our nails, he liked our hair long, and he’d prefer it if my mom wore long skirts the majority of the time. During that time of my life communication seemed to be a privilege only my father had. It was as if he was the leader and commander and we were his naïve audience that fed into his act and words. The abuse wasn’t so much physical but instead verbal. This experience showed me that communication has the potential to detriment someone’s self-love and way of thinking. 

Our course textbook Communication a Critical/Cultural Introduction covers a few topics and points that I found very helpful and also relate to my story. For instance, willingness to dialogue which refers to the will and self-action of entering a conversation with the desire to grow or learn from it. In my parent’s case dialogue was never ever in the picture. To me it seemed like my father was the only person talking and communicating a message while my mother was applying meaning to his words without giving any feedback. It was a lot like that example we had on the first few weeks of class of the ball catching between two of my classmates. The ultimate goal was to toss the ball back and forward to each other and this demonstrated the pattern and rhythm of dialogue/conversation. Unfortunately, in my story my father was the only one who had a hold of the ball.

My father came to mind when we discussed rhetoric and sophists during class lectures. The lectures consisted of elaborating on the meaning of rhetoric which according to my understanding is the art of speaking, and writing through the use of persuasion. In this case my father was very smooth at keeping my mother on her toes and essentially hypnotizing her with his charm. I feel like through her eyes she envisioned my father to be wiser and better at making decisions for the family. A sentence I found interesting from the book provides an example and metaphor that describes the consumption of food to be like words and language. By this they mean that we consume them, take them in, digest them and words carry understandings, attitudes, and actions that stay within us for a certain amount of time however in some cases like my mother’s they can develop into habits of daily doses.  

I chose to share this story because I feel like it demonstrates the strength and power communication holds. I believe it is important to be aware that when speaking of rhetoric, it’s important to elaborate that it can be used for good or for evil. The choice is yours. My parent’s divorce was for the better and a relief to us all. We all grew from it and learned from the past. My father many years later finally stepped down from his imaginary and self-built pedestal and saw the issue for what it was, but unfortunately the language and words had done an unredeemable damage.